


Sana

by Mierke



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 06:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12126324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mierke/pseuds/Mierke
Summary: Luna studies a Dementor.





	Sana

"You want to borrow a Dementor?"

"Study," Luna corrected. "And, yes please."

Harry leaned backwards in his chair and regarded her through his glasses. Luna rather thought he had a bit of a Dumbledore air about him, all amused by the people around him but so wary of the world.

"Not just any, though," she elaborated. "It's been said that a Dementor will rise whose power will be different from the others. I believe that time is now, and since I've been to their other nests, I believe she resides at Azkaban."

"She?"

"Obviously," Luna replied. Seriously, people could sometimes be so silly. "So, can I?"

Harry started leafing through some of his files; more for show, Luna thought, than because they could give him any information. But she left him his quirk and waited in silence. He wasn't bothering her, so why point out the obvious?

"How will you know which one you need?" he eventually asked, and Luna felt the excitement that she had tried to tamper down once she realised her Dementor was at Azkaban rise again. She would be able to convince Harry, she could feel it.

"I believe the unknown power is happiness," she replied. "I will be able to feel it once I meet her."

"And," she said, talking over Harry's predictable protest, "I've been to other nests before. I've always come out of it alive. I will this time as well."

"This is all..." Harry waved a hand about. "because of a story?"

"You defeated Voldemort with the Deathly Hallows," she said. "And you still don't believe in the power of a story?"

"No one is supposed to know that," Harry mumbled, but he didn't seem really angry that Luna knew things she wasn't supposed to, which was a relief. It sometimes surprised her how many things she wasn't supposed to know, and she couldn't always keep track of them.

"I will see what I can do," he said, and Luna cheered.

* * *

Luna felt cold. So, so cold. She could still hear the laughs from the guards in her head at her request to enter Azkaban to inspect the Dementors. It was weird; she'd never really minded people laughing at her before, but now she couldn't get it out of her head. She had always known she was different, but... Didn't that used to be a good thing? Now all she felt was _alien_ , as if her entire being was out of shape with the world around her, as if she was trying to fit her body into a hole that wasn't made for her.

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to find some warmth. Why was it so cold in Azkaban? 

Right. Dementors.

Luna opened her eyes; or at least, she tried to, which was when she realised her eyes had already been open. The Dementor density was so strong here that no light could penetrate the darkness. She had visited other breeding places before, but none had been this bad. She struggled against the despair weighing her down, against the ideas encroaching upon her about how this study would never amount to anything, about how none of her ideas were ever taken seriously. About how it wouldn't _work_.

Taking a deep breath (always the first advice whenever you started feeling down, right?) only seemed to invite more despair into her, and her knees buckled, sending her to the ground. She could feel her happiness fade away from her on her exhalation. She had to get out of here, and fast.

She forced herself to look around and focus. If the stories were true - and she knew, deep in her bones, that they were - one of the Dementors would be just the tiniest bit lighter. You wouldn't be able to see the difference in any other circumstances, but in the prison as it was...

There. 

Luna spotted it. An anomaly. Mere black instead of pitch black, and it seemed to be coming towards her.

* * *

"You have a dementor in your house."

"That is correct," Luna said, as she tried to still her shaking hands enough to be able to drink her mug of hot chocolate. 

"Or technically," she amended, once the first sip went down her throat, bringing warmth and peace with it. "In my shed."

Ginny shook her head, as if she found that defence lacking. Through the kitchen windows Luna could see a horse galloping around the small building. 

"Thank you," she said, inclining her head to indicate Ginny's patronus.

"You're welcome," Ginny answered. "It was... Surprisingly easy, actually."

"That's because this is a rare Dementor," Luna said, a smile on her face now she was back home and her plan seemed to truly form. "I'm going to change her diet."

"You're going to what?"

Luna just stared at her friend. Some of the insecurity that Azkaban had riled up still remained, but it was easy to ignore. She had never been very prone to depression, after all.

* * *

St. Mungo's had been extraordinarily kind to her, Luna knew. Releasing her father from the suicide ward and into her care had taken some convincing, but in the end the Mind Healers had concluded that there was nothing they could do anymore, and maybe being around family would help.

Luna hadn't told them about Sana; she had a nagging suspicion that they wouldn't exactly approve of her experiment. Her father had, though, holding on to her stories as she had always held on to his. 

So every morning, she dragged her father out of bed, and locked him in a room with her dementor. At the beginning she would limit the exposure to just an hour a day. She kept a close eye on him; she couldn't be in a room with them (which would ruin the point of Sana only having negative emotions to feed on) and her heart always beat ten times as fast when the time came to get her father out. She didn't think Sana wanted his soul, but she was well aware that even she couldn't know everything. But as the weeks went on and he didn't seem to get worse, Luna upped the dosage, so to speak. 

Her father had good days and bad days; on the good days, she kept him away from Sana, trying instead to find something to do for the two of them. She told him about her other experiments, about the places she visited, about her friends (about how she had those now). She asked him about her mom, a subject that had always seemed to cheer him up before, but now seemed to only bring pain. On the bad days, she would sometimes leave him with Sana for hours, while she chewed on her hair and waited.

* * *

"She's getting lighter," Ginny said, awe in her voice as she looked at Sana through the glass window.

"I know," Luna answered, quietly preparing lunch. Her father was in there with Sana, but it had been a while since that thought had worried her. "He almost seems lighter when he leaves her now."

"That is truly amazing, Luna," Ginny said as she sat down, and Luna looked at her friend with a critical eye.

"Why are you so ready to believe?" she asked; the words feeling wrong in her mouth, but the question needed to be asked. Ginny had always needed proof, solid proof, not interpretations based on hope and desire as much as empirical evidence. 

"George," Ginny whispered, so low Luna almost couldn't hear it. "He's not getting better. Mom keeps thinking that she can solve this, that her love will be enough to save him, but I don't think she can. Every day is a little worse than the day before. If your dementor-"

"Sana," Luna interrupted. "Her name is Sana."

"If Sana," Ginny continued with barely a shake of her head, "can truly take some of the edge off, can lift some of the darkest thoughts out of his head so he can learn to experience some happiness again..."

She trailed off, but Luna felt more validated than ever in her experiment.

* * *

It took just over a year. After a couple of months, her father had been well enough to undergo therapy again, to work through the things that dragged him down. Being around Sana freed up the energy that he had used to need to battle the negativity and suicidal ideation, allowing him to put it into improving his life.

On bad days, moments that still overtook him, he retreated in a room with Sana. Even with all her beliefs that she was doing the right thing, Luna had been afraid that the process was reversible, and the moment her father would enter the room with even the faintest hint of happiness - even if it was just the idea that yesterday had been a good day and as such good days were still _possible_ \- Sana would revert to being a regular dementor and heap despair upon Luna's slowly improving father.

But she didn't. 

And now, just over a year after taking her home from Azkaban, Luna discovered that Sana had turned completely, blindingly white. She entered the room where she had housed her for the last thirteen months, and bowed in thanks to the creature who had saved her father's life. 

Her last doubts and anxieties vanished, leaving her only with the absolute certainty that - despite the similar danger of overexposure as normal dementors have - Sana would be a tremendous asset in a post-war world.

She had done well.


End file.
